From: Ukrainer. — On May 18, 1944, Soviet authorities deported the entire Crimean Tatar population to remote parts of Central Asia — a crime that ultimately wiped out nearly half of the peninsula’s indigenous nation.
What many don’t know is that by the time of the deportation, Crimean Tatars were already a minority in their own homeland, making up just 20–25% of the population — the result of centuries of systematic repression and waves of forced emigration.
In collaboration with Lia Ğazı we explore how Russia has spent centuries erasing Crimea’s indigenous people.
The 1944 deportation was the tragic culmination of a long history that began with the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Empire in 1783. Before the annexation, Crimean Tatars comprised about 90% of the peninsula’s population.
From the very beginning, Crimean Tatars were the main obstacle to achieve this goal that Russia committed to remove by the means of persecution, displacement, cultural erasure, and deprivation of land and property, much of which was handed over to Russian generals and nobles.
As a result, hundreds of thousands of Crimean Tatars had to leave their homeland in multiple waves of emigration, as remaining in Crimea often meant certain death or oppression.
Kerem, a Crimean Tatar living in Turkey, recalls how his ancestors fled Crimea on horseback after Russia’s first annexation in 1783, pursued by the Russian army in a harrowing escape that claimed a family member. Their journey took them first to Bulgaria, then to Eskişehir — now home to one of the world’s largest Crimean Tatar communities, with around 200,000 people.
In 1853, Russia attacked the Ottoman Empire, triggering the Crimean War. Fearing the Crimean Tatars’ deep historical, cultural, and religious ties to the Ottomans, Tsar Alexander II ordered their expulsion to “rid the peninsula of this harmful evil people”. This sparked another mass exodus — for the first time, more Crimean Tatars lived in exile than in their homeland.
Yener, a Crimean Tatar born in Romania, shares a family story of a 12-year-old ancestor who fled Crimea alone during the Crimean War, likely after his parents were killed by Russian forces. He crossed the Black Sea clinging to a piece of cork and, by a twist of fate, reunited with his sister in Romania — where the family has lived ever since, hoping to return.
The 1877–1878 Ottoman-Russian War forced many more Crimean Tatars to flee, including the ancestors of Yiğit Taymaz, who escaped Russian repression — first to Turkmenistan, then to Turkey. Now a fourth-generation exile, Yiğit preserves his culture and language while holding onto the hope for a free Crimea under Ukrainian sovereignty.
Since Russia’s occupation of Crimea in 2014, it has resumed a familiar tactic — creating unbearable conditions that force many more Crimean Tatars to choose between exile and suffering. This new wave of colonisation threatens to erase their very identity — an unfolding crime the world cannot afford to ignore.
Voice of Ukraine 